accuracy

weight

value

Weapon Info

ammo

clip size

Related Perks

damage

mods

Misc.

Contents

The minigun is a motorized Gatling-style rapid-fire weapon commonly employed by the military, or other lesser factions that managed to acquire such a weapon. Miniguns can be found as mounted door guns on Vertibirds or as a hand-held heavy assault and support weapon. It uses 5mm rounds as ammo.

It requires a moment to spin up before it actually starts firing, but makes up for the delay with an incredibly high rate of fire and large ammunition capacity. As can be expected from a motorized rotary cannon, it burns through ammo reserves at an alarming rate, even more so when equipped with accelerated barrels. This and the fact that only a select few enemies wield miniguns makes it difficult to keep the weapon supplied without spending a lot of caps at arms dealers. Investing points in the Scrounger perk and installing the tri-barrel modification helps to alleviate this issue to some extent. The latter significantly increases the minigun's per-shot damage, range and accuracy at the cost of a sharp drop in firing rate, all of which make the weapon a lot more cost-efficient and effective at mid to long range. The downside is that this mod requires heavy investment in the Gun Nut perk and won't be available until the player reaches a fairly high level, a point where the minigun will most likely find itself outclassed in most respects by the Gatling laser.

Due to the minigun dishing out huge volumes of low-damage shots with noticeable spread, it is best used for crowd-controlling large numbers of weak or lightly armored foes, like most types of animals, feral ghouls or raiders. Deploying it against heavily armored adversaries like power armor-clad Brotherhood of Steel soldiers is ill-advised, as their level of protection will negate almost any damage the minigun is potentially capable of dealing, regardless of modifications and related perks.

When fired continuously, the minigun's barrel cluster glows ever hotter, eventually reaching a bright yellow color. While in real life the barrels would be close to melting at this point, rendering the weapon inoperable, in-game the minigun remains functional but suffers a serious drop in its already low accuracy unless upgraded with the tri-barrel mod.

Without any legendary modifiers the DPS of this weapon is lackluster as it has low damage per bullet, low accuracy and lacks any form of armor piercing. Without modifiers its strength is highest earlier in the game, where ammo for this gun is scarce, but falls off when enemies start to stack armor.

This is the first animated belt-fed weapon in the series. The ammunition is housed in a magazine below the gun itself.

Characters wearing power armor hold the minigun in a relaxed stance with the muzzle pointing left and down while they are standing around or moving, provided they haven't aimed at anything for some seconds. This sort of idle animation is missing for everyone clad in any type of regular armor though - they always hold the weapon pointed forward instead, even during sprinting.

The "Explosive" legendary modifier adds an immense amount of DPS to the minigun, particularly with the last ranks of Heavy Gunner and Demolition Expert (76-80 damage per shot displayed, compared to 16-20 without any legendary modifiers and depending on barrel mod). Be careful - the splash damage this combination creates is incredibly brutal and capable of wiping out whole groups of clustered enemies in a single burst, but it will hit anything in the area including settlers, town citizens and other allies. Another huge bonus is the fact that the minigun's considerable spread becomes largely irrelevant - as long as the gun is aimed at a target, it will hit it even if the actual projectiles don't connect. Not even cover can keep targets safe from the devastation this gun unleashes.

Shops start stocking 5mm ammo en masse starting at level 24.

The barrel spins clockwise while in first person and counter-clockwise while in third person when using power armor.

Without any ammunition and the shredder modification the minigun can be used as a melee weapon.